Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Best Case Scenario: Five More Years Of Fighting In Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd


Five more years of fighting. That's the best case scenario in Afghanistan according to Sir David Richards, head of the British Army, in a BBC interview reported via the Daily Telegraph:



�I�d say we have got five years of declining violence � and then we�ll go into a supporting role.�


He added: �If we get it right, our estimation is that by about 2011, 2012 you�ll see an appreciable improvement. And by about 2014, we will ramp down our numbers as they ramp up and you�ll start to reduce the overall risks of the operation.


However, he admitted: �It is an ambitious target.�


Ministers have previously suggested that British numbers could start to fall more quickly.


Discussing troop levels in August, Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, said that �in the next year or so we will be able to show a degree of progress� in Afghanistan.


Earlier this year Sir David sparked political controversy by suggesting that Britain may have to support Afghanistan for another 40 years to deliver stability in the country.


But everything we've seen so far indicates that neither the UK nor the US is any much good at translating paper concepts into reality on the ground. So maybe we'd better just double that estimate. At least.



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